October 16, 2016

Cornell Field Hockey Falls to 1-3 In Ivy League After Harvard Shutout

BySarah Peters | October 16, 2016

With a chance to knock off Harvard’s undefeated Ivy League play, Cornell field hockey fell short, shut out by the Crimson to fall to 1-3 in Ivy play.

The Red started the game off strong, challenging the Crimson for the first 25 minutes. However, Harvard locked in its rhythm and scored two goals by the end of the first half.

The second half began with Harvard scoring within the first 20 seconds of the half. The team followed with two more goals, ending the game 5-0.

Leaderboard 1

“[Their third goal] was a momentum shifter” said head coach Donna Hornibrook. “To give another one away within minutes of the second half put us in a position we weren’t able to recover from.”

Although Hornibrook said she believes the Red was physically ready for its game against the Crimson, based on what she saw during the training sessions this past week, there was a mental aspect of the game that the Red was not prepared for.

“We need to keep being patient” said Hornibrook, “we can’t get frustrated when things don’t go well immediately.”

Leaderboard 2

The women are aware of the quality of their performance and are looking to learn from this game, according to Hornibrook.

“Overall we are disappointed,” Hornibrook said. “When things didn’t go well we started to get away from the team aspect of our game and people tried to do a little too much which resulted in us getting back on our heels.”

This individual style of play is one aspect that led to multiple turnovers by Cornell throughout the game and provided multiple opportunities for Harvard to attack and score.

“Keeping possession is going to be important” said Hornibrook. “We started to press a little bit and do too much individually, not from a selfish place, but from wanting the team to succeed, and sometimes we created turnovers for the other team.”

Although the women were on their heels for the majority of the game, their efforts did not diminish, according to Hornibrook.

“We had a lot of girls who worked very hard” said Hornibrook. “As a group it wasn’t happening.”

One skill the Red was working on this season was its offensive and defensive corners, but this weekend these aspects of the game were poorly executed, according to Hornibrook.

“Ideally you get half-a-dozen corners during a game and you have the chance to get into a rhythm.” Hornibrook said. “But when that doesn’t happen each corner becomes even more important.”

The women are not letting this loss go right away, using it as an opportunity to learn and to improve their skills — physically and mentally — for future games.

“We are trying to take the positive and focus on the areas we need to improve on and work on them to prepare for our two matches next weekend” Hornibrook said.

The Red hopes to use what it has learned against the Crimson in order to end this two game losing streak on Oct. 21 against Brown in Providence, and on the very next day against Rider at home.

For junior goalkeeper Kelly Johnson, a fourth generation Cornellian playing for Cornell field hockey is about more than just representing her family and her institution. “A great majority of the people in my family that have come to Cornell have been men, so representing the power of females in sports and academics means a lot to me,” she said.